Friday 9th July 2010

Hmm. move the whole building 10 ft, build new rooms on the top instead of the tower. It will only cost you 10 lakhs and prolong everything 2 months....

It’s with very mixed feelings we wake up this rainy Saturday morning.

Yesterday we got the writings on the wall regarding the construction of the front house.

THE SITUATION IS BAD!

First
After the municipality stop the construction of the front house everybody told us that the wall facing the road has to be moved 3 ft. That is something we ca live with – it will only have a minor impact on the rooms and the cost is OK. More important – everything can be done within our deadline.

But yesterday we had the guy in charge looking at the house, road etc. He straightened everything out:

The wall must be 3 meters away from the center of the road… he said referring to the official rules. Rules we had never heard about until Tuesday when we got the written approval for the construction of the bath tower and top floor from the old engineer.

If that rule has to be followed that will almost half the size of rooms and make them useless.

Second:
The tower is completely illegal. If we do the slightest modification on that, we can’t use it at all. And to make it the room we want, which was supposed to be one of our favorite rooms, you have to modify.

Conclusion:
We are in a situation where 30 – 40% of our business is gone – that means that the whole project, as it look now is dead.

—

The locals would of course just bribe the right persons to look the other way. That’s what everybody do. But since someone obviously has something against the project OR against our land lords and only wants to make trouble for unknown reasons, our only future scenario is to make everything legal. Otherwise ‘they’ will grab the first occasion to give us troubles again.

So the day was above normal chaos level. We have to act fast either to control the damage (reduce the costs) or to speed up the solution – whatever that will be. Our alternatives are 1) Move the whole building away from the road or 2) the same AND add two more rooms on the top.

The first solution is fast and easy and will not bring extra costs BUT reduce our rooms from 9 to 8 – in money terms that means minus 5 lakhs compared to our break-even scenario.

The second solution will prolong everything with at least one month. Adding two rooms on the first floor means that we have to make a concrete roof/floor. And because of the monsoon that just started it will take the concrete 20 days to dry. But this solution means that we will increase our capacity from 9 to 10 rooms. We don’t know the cost for the solution – Ansari’s first estimate was so far out that Thomas walked out laughing. BUT if we use he’s crazy estimate in our calculation our business year one will be improved with estimated 5 lakhs.

The big question is: What if we go for solution 2 and our unknown enemy finds an unknown mistake that will put everything on hold again?

We don’t know – we have to think and think fast. New drawings + applications have to be made and send to the municipality in 5 days when the new fiscal year starts.

We also have a joker – our land lord will go to the municipality and see if she can convince them to stick to the 3 ft rule everyone told us in the beginning. That means that we can continue as it is BUT move the wall facing the road a little. But still we will have a problem about the tower room.

—

In normal situations you’ll probably say: F*** YOU to everything and everybody and get the Hell out of here…

But if we turn our back to the front house and look at the rest of the project – everything is blooming like a beautiful creative flower.

The bathrooms in the tower AND the connection to the rest of the house has added a lot of very nice and interesting details to the four rooms. And as we are writing these lines – the workers has started turning the top floor into a very interesting Loft apartment. So witnessing our dream evolve day by day unveiling surprises and effects you can’t plan using CAD, Excell, power point, photo shop and all the other programs that plays an increasing part of our work these days – that is fantastic.

Add to this all the encourage we keep getting from friends and people just passing by really proves that we are on the right track with Tings Tea Lounge and Tings Lounge Hotel…

If we just got 5 minutes to really enjoy it. Right know it’s more problems than pleasure…